Hydrogen, token solution from the Bush administration ? your opinion ?

Question

It is expensive to produce Hydrogen (H2) from... fossil fuels. Other possible primary sources of energy would be even more expensive.

So how is it done ? Hydrocarbs are split into their basic elements: Carbon (C) and Hydrogen (H2)

So here´s the deal:
Try to pretend you´re not going to use the carbon why we´re mining coal in large quantities ??? Isn´t that an illusion ?
why not directly burn regular fuel then ? Doesn´t it seem more logical ?

Especially, the cheapest option for hydrogen is to produce it from natural gas. But we can already power cars with natural gas LNG (Liquified Natural Gas) using actual technologies and it´s very clean... so ?

Hydrogen is a carrier energy carrier like electricity and a not a source of energy (sun, wind, coal, etc...). It can´t naturally be found in large quantities in the environment. A carrier can only be produced with a source.

What´s your opinion ?

I just feel that since wind and photovoltaic produce directly a very good and useful energy carrier (electricity) using it to create hydrogen with an efficiency of 50% would be wasting taxpayers money.

Answer 1

you have the facts right - the 'hydrogen economy' is much less energy efficient than oil ( a a bigger polluter - due to the use of coal and natural gas to separate and compress the hydrogen )

but it looks much better if 1. you use nuclear energy or 2. IF OIL IS NOT AVAILABLE and that is the point ! The politicians are afraid to emphasis it but the oil we use is not under our control

the main problem is going to be replacing an infrastructure built up over 100 years with a hydrogen infrastructure - look for it to happen for your grandchildren but right now it's the 'electric car' of the 21st century - gotta keep the masses happy !

Answer 2

Hi. You are correct that Hydrogen fuel cells are primarily useful for their portability (as it takes as much energy to yield Hydrogen from a hydrocarbon as it delivers in forming water). However, they are very efficient in that capacity, and it is technologically feasible to produce hydrogen from almost any hydrocarboon source (the cleaner the better). The ideal scenario is to couple hydrogen reformers to a clean energy source, like photovoltaic cells or wind power, and to develop a fuel-efficient way to carry the hydrogen on-board (the biggest problem: so far the hydrogen tanks take up the most weight).

The main advantage is that:
1. While hydrocarbons can also be used in cars, cars are terribly inefficient and produce a lot of carbon monoxide, dioxide, etc.
2. Producing hydrogen at a central location is much more efficient, and offers almost zero pollution.
3. The fuel cell battery is many times more efficient than a combustion energy, and even a hybrid engine. Unlike combustion engines, whose efficiency decreases as the load increases, the efficiency of a fuel cell increases as the load increases.
4. The infrastructure, once developed, can have wide-range applicability. The cost so far is rather high (several estimates indicate that the price of "gas" may have to double to make hydrogen cost-effective), but almost all new technologies benefit from greater returns to scale and productivity increases as the technology becomes more widely available.

Answer 3

It's one important tool to help, even though it's just an energy carrier, not a source..

Hydrogen can be produced by electricity from non-fossil fuel sources. Nuclear, solar, wind. It can be "burned" in urban areas without causing air pollution.

It has a much higher energy density than electricity in batteries, and so is a more practical solution than electric cars for long distance travel. Electric cars are a better idea for short distance travel in the city, but hydrogen cars are more versatile.

It's also a better storage medium than batteries for leveling loads on the power grid.

Not a complete solution, but useful nonetheless.

Answer 4

Essentially, hydrogen is a way of storing energy. The advantage to a hydrogen-based economy is that once it is in place, the hydrogen sources can be changed to whatever is cheapest or most ecological. You can, for example, use solar cells to make hydrogen from water.

How is this different from simply adding the solar electricity to the grid? It isn't really very different, except that existing internal combustion engines can be fairly easily modified to use hydrogen in place of gasoline, the same way they can use natural gas.

As far as the Bush administration's interest in hydrogen, it probably has a lot to do with that a move to hydrogen is perhaps the least disruptive way to move to more sustainable sources of energy, because it would initially use the same energy systems and the same transportation systems as are currently in place.

Answer 5

You seem to understand the issues. Natural gas isn't cheaper than coal though. It produces carbon dioxide just like coal. In a perfect world, it takes as much energy to separate the hydrogen atom from the water molecule as it produces putting them back together again. In our imperfect world, the inherent inefficiencies waste energy in the process.

Burning fossil fuels directly is their most efficient use.

Answer 6

Bush's promotion of Hydrogen Power is one of the very, very few intelligent initiatives to come from his administration, replacing Clinton's electric car initiatives.

To me, hydrogen is the key to making solar and wind power a serious source for widescale electric power generation. Those each share the same major weaknesses: they are dependent on the weather and time of day for availability, and they cannot really be continuously modulated to match demand, like you can at a fossil fuel, hydro or nuke plant. In the latter 3 cases you merely adjust the fuel feed to match the instantaneous demand.

But if sufficient excess generating capacity were to built using solar or wind power resources, the excess capacity that would exist at any particular time could be diverted into splitting water molecules into H2 and O2, thus creating a transportable hydrogen fuel to be burned at a different time or place. In fact it might end up being preferable to use all solar and wind powered generators to manufacture hydrogen fuel in this manner, the hydrogen feed rate into an power plant could be throttled from moment to moment to match the demand perfectly, and of course excess H2 could be sold as portable fuel.

I see H2 as a cleaner, preferred alternative to expensive and exotic chemical batteries which will be short lived and dangerous to dispose of as they apparently are in so called "hybrid" autos.

Answer 7

Hydrogen isn't just a token effort by the Bush administration. The Clinton administration was also big on hydrogen.

I have never understood the appeal of hydrogen power. It takes electricity to make it (via hydrolysis of water or some other process). That electricity is going to have to come from hydrocarbons, thus there will still be heavy CO2 emissions.

Answer 8

like you said, you have to burn the fossil fuels to make the hydrogen...so what is the difference?

Answer 9

didnt you answer your own question, the only way to be completely energy independant is to get fusion working